Shady XLII: Eminem in 2014

What if maturity is a myth? It’s a question that plagues a lot of people as they get older and find that, while they may change physically, their brains feel exactly the same. The accepted narrative is that maturity involves growing wiser through experience. But what if experience rewards you for being an immature asshole?

When Eminem came onto the scene 15 years ago, he constantly rapped about killing his wife and taking their infant daughter. Now that daughter has grown up and graduated from high school, and Eminem is drawing headlines for a freestyle in which he raps about a desire to punch Lana Del Rey in the face “like Ray Rice.” That line is egregious enough by itself, but when you look at the lyrics to Em’s “Shady Cxvpher” — a promotion for his label’s new compilation, Shady XV — in context, well, it’s even worse: “But I may fight for gay rights especially if they d—. It’s more of a knockout than Janay Rice. Play nice? Bitch I’ll punch Lana Del Rey right in the face twice, like Ray Rice in broad daylight in the plain sight of the elevator surveillance till her head banged on the railing, then celebrate with the Ravens.” After the tiny blowback to the Lana lyric, Eminem released another single called “Vegas,” in which he jokes about raping Iggy Azalea, which puts me in the unfortunate position of siding with Iggy Azalea, who tweeted, “im bored of the old men threatening young women as entertainment trend and much more interested in the young women getting $ trend. zzzz”